by brant bullard | May 27, 2014 | Metabolic Validation Program
CDC report says most common medications are for heart disease and high cholesterol
Prescription drugs are playing an increasingly larger role in U.S. life, with nearly half of all Americans taking one or more medications.
Among adults, the most common prescription drugs are for cardiovascular disease and high cholesterol.
Those are two of several key findings in the federal government’s annual comprehensive report on the nation’s health that was released in May.
The relationship between Americans and their prescriptions is complex, according to the report produced by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On the one hand, more people than ever are receiving effective treatment for chronic conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels and depression.
But doctors and pharmacists also find themselves struggling with unintended consequences of drug use, such as prescription narcotics abuse and the advent of antibiotic-resistant germs.
“Isn’t that the case with all forms of medical technology?” said Julia Holmes, chief of the analytic studies branch at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. “It results in great benefit to people who are ill and disabled, but there’s always the potential for inappropriate use.”
The report — titled “Health, United States, 2013” — found the percentage of Americans taking prescription drugs has increased dramatically. During the most recent period, from 2007 to 2010, about 48 percent of people said they were taking a prescription medication, compared with 39 percent in 1988-1994.
Prescription drug use increased with age. About one in four children took one or more prescription drugs in the past month, compared to nine in 10 adults 65 and older, according to the study.
“This is really not earth-shattering news. There’s an increasing number of people with chronic illnesses, and the primary management tool available for dealing with chronic illness is medication,” said William Lang, vice president of policy and advocacy for the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.
One in 10 Americans said he or she had taken five or more prescription drugs in the previous month. That raises concerns about potential drug interactions, said Anne Burns, senior vice president for professional affairs at the American Pharmacists Association.
“We know that the number of adverse drug events a patient is likely to experience increases as the number of medications they are taking increases,” Burns said. “You’ve got everything from potential interactions between medications to timing issues taking a variety of medications throughout the day.”
People who took five or more drugs in the past month tended to be older. Only 10.8 percent of people taking that many drugs were between 18 and 44, while 41.7 percent were between 45 and 64 and 47.5 percent were 65 and older.
Drugs to manage cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease and kidney disease are the most widely used medications among adults, the CDC report found.
In particular, the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs among people 18 to 64 has increased more than sixfold since 1988-1994, due in part to the increased use of statins. Also, nearly 18 percent of adults 18 to 64 took at least one cardiovascular drug during the past month.
The CDC report noted some headway in efforts to combat the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Prescriptions of antibiotics for cold symptoms during routine medical visits declined 39 percent between 1995-1996 and 2009-2010.
But the report also found a tripling of overdose deaths due to prescription narcotics. Painkillers taken among people 15 and older caused 6.6 deaths for every 100,000 people in 2009-2010, compared with 1.9 deaths per 100,000 in 1999-2000.
There has been a fourfold increase in antidepressant use among adults, but Holmes said that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Seeking help for a mental health disorder isn’t as stigmatized as it once was, she noted. In addition, companies have introduced more effective antidepressants, and researchers have found that antidepressants also can be used to treat panic and anxiety disorders.
“If antidepressants enable people to function fully in their social roles, that’s a good thing,” Holmes said.
Interestingly, even though more people are taking prescription medications, the annual growth in spending on drugs has declined. The CDC reported that spending growth slowed from 14.7 percent in 2001 to 2.9 percent in 2011.
Many popular medications have gone off patent, including cholesterol-controlling statin drugs and other medications used to treat high blood pressure or heart disease, Burns said. Increased use of generic forms of these drugs has helped control spending on medication.
PGx Medical’s Metabolic Validation testing can help decrease the number of “unnecessary drugs” based on individual metabolic validation. But most importantly, it will help healthcare professionals determine the right drug, right dose, for the right person providing a better quality of life for each patient.
For more information, contact:
PGx Medical
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
Info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112
www.pgxmed.com
Source: consumer.healthday.com
by brant bullard | May 19, 2014 | Metabolic Validation Program
Pharmacogenomics has become an area of great potential in the medical community. Therefore, the attitudes and knowledge among healthcare professionals is essential.
Nurses could play a critical role in the integration of pharmacogenomics testing and into routine practice. However, to do this, nurses must be accepting of and knowledgeable about this type of genetic testing.
Nurses who are knowledgeable about this type of testing and therapy will be able to become a patient advocate and discuss the benefits and limitations of this therapy with their patients. Patient advocacy is an essential nursing role and is a part of the definition of nursing set out by the American Nursing Association. However, in order to be a patient advocate, a nurse should have an adequate knowledge base about pharmacogenetic testing as well as accessible resources that may enhance the patient’s understanding of this therapy.
To grasp the basics of pharmacogenomics, you need to understand drug metabolism—specifically the cytochrome P450 (CYP450) enzyme system. CYP450 enzymes are the most important drug-metabolizing enzymes, and the CYP450 enzyme system is the most important system affecting drug metabolism. Other genetic factors also affect drug transport proteins, drug absorption, drug receptors, and drug excretion.
In the simplest sense, the goal of pharmacogenomics or metabolic validation testing is to understand the effects of genetics on drug response. If this can be done, drug inefficacy and adverse effects could be predicted and avoided, and appropriate drugs could always be prescribed in the proper dosages.
For more information on pharmacogenomics or how you can implement the PGx Metabolic Validation testing in your facility, contact:
PGx Medical
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112
Resource: Americannursetoday.com
by brant bullard | May 16, 2014 | Metabolic Validation Program
Depression affects more than 6.5 million of the 35 million Americans aged 65 years or older.
Depression in elderly people often goes untreated because many people think that depression is a normal part of aging and a natural reaction to chronic illness, loss and social transition.
Treatment Once diagnosed, 80 percent of clinically depressed individuals can be effectively treated by medication. Medications can be beneficial for elderly individuals in treating the symptoms of depression.
But according to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) research has shown that some depressed individuals may need to try more than one medication to get an optimal response.
But by playing the “trial & error” game, many seniors are living with depression while trying to figure what medication is metabolizing in their body and what isn’t. By doing a simple (once in a lifetime) metabolic validation test which involves a simple swab of the mouth, physicians can now determine what medications will work for each individual resident. This allows better, more personalized care for the resident and most importantly, a better quality of life.
According to a 2013 Clinical Gerontologist study done by Tracy Chippendale, PhD, OTR/L, “Depressive symptoms are expected to become a leading cause of the global burden of disease, second only to cardiovascular disease, by the year 2020.” Given these ominous statistics, it’s time for nursing home staff to start thinking about what they can do within their own facilities to potentially ease the burden and help their nursing home residents feel less depressed.
The PGx Medical metabolic validation test is reimbursed by medicare so there is no cost to the facility, and no cost to the resident or their family.
For more information, contact:
PGx Medical
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112
Source: NAMI.com
Source: digicareins.com
by brant bullard | May 15, 2014 | Metabolic Validation Program
Unlocking the future of medicine
A primary goal of personalized medicine is to provide the best medical treatment for each individual patient by determining which drug will have the best efficacy and have the least amount of toxicity and/or adverse effects. Furthermore, understanding interindividual variations of response to drug treatment, especially in patients with potential adverse reactions, might lead to biomarkers that can be used to predict the low incidence of idiosyncratic toxicity. Individualized medicine is usually based on the concept of pharmacogenomics that studies the influence of an individual’s genotype and/or SNPs on their response to a drug or medical treatment.
When drugs are prescribed, personalized medicine will use metabolic validation testing to predict how individuals will metabolize the compound. One example of this pharmacogenomics approach is the FDA approval of genetic tests that can predict the appropriate starting dose of the blood thinner warfarin (trade name Coumadin).
Because warfarin has a very narrow therapeutic range and because there is high inter- and intra-patient variability in response, finding the optimal dose can be challenging. While there are non-genetic factors that affect individual response, it is known that variations in two specific genes are associated with response to warfarin, and it has been suggested that pharmacogenomic-based dosing could speed up the determination of the appropriate initial therapeutic dose.
Medical School and Pharmacogenomics
Pharmacogenomics has been the major focus area to date; 84% of medical schools in the United Kingdom and 74% of U.S. and Canadian medical schools include pharmacogenomics in their curricula.
Source: Medscape.com
For more information on Personalized Medicine through Metabolic Validation Testing, contact:
PGx Medical
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
405-509-5112
info@pgxmed.com
by brant bullard | May 12, 2014 | Metabolic Validation Program
Before pharmacogenomics, healthcare providers used a “one size fits all” approach to treating individuals.
Now it has the potential to transform healthcare through, avoidance of drug side effects.
Metabolic Validation testing can determine whether you are a poor metabolizer, intermediate or ultra-rapid metabolizer.
The goal of metabolic validation testing (pharmacogenetic testing), is to have drug treatments that are specific to each person.
Today, healthcare providers have the ability to use genomic information to tailor medicine and/or treatments to the individual, and personalize their care.
Nurses are typically on the front line communicating with the patient, family and other healthcare professionals. It is important that they understand the impact and effectiveness of personalized medicine.
A nurse can play a big role in personalized medicine. They can help facilitate drug selection or dosage in treatment of an individual.
In 2007, the FDA revised the label on the common blood-thinning drug warfarin (Coumadin) to explain that a person’s genetic make-up might influence response to the drug. Warfarin and many other drugs now have a Black Box Warning to let healthcare professionals know patients may need to receive a lower dose or to change what medications they are receiving to avoid adverse drug reactions.
For more information on Metabolic Validation, contact:
PGx Medical
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112
www.pgxmed.com
